I recently had to re-install Kubuntu 20.04 on a laptop. In the process of setting up Thunderbird, the installation process said it had found address books and asked if I … (read more)
I recently had to re-install Kubuntu 20.04 on a laptop. In the process of setting up Thunderbird, the installation process said it had found address books and asked if I wanted to connect them. Sounded like a time-saver, so I said "Yes." What got connected were several completely irrelevant files, most CSV contacts from my cell phone, but the extensive .mab file from the old version of Thunderbird was not there.
I have found some proposed solutions that tell me to
>> shut down Thunderbird,
>> rename the abook.sqlite files in my profile folder,
>> copy to the old abook.mab file (which I have on a backup disk) into my profile folder, and
>> restart Thunderbird, which will than automatically convert the old .mab file to the new .sqlite format.
That doesn't work. First problem is, I don't have a "profile" folder. I do have a profile.ini FILE which points to two other folders named (approximately) a1b2c3d4.default and z9y8x7w5-default-release (I've changed the exact names, but the name format is as shown).
Second problem is, my a1b2c3d4.default folder (which, in older versions, was where my abook.mab file was found) had no .sqlite files. My z9y8x7w5-default-release folder has several such files but named abook-4.sqlite, abook-16.sqlite, and abook-17.sqlite. They are all shown as 256 KB. When I added the old abook.mab file to that .default-release folder, it did produce an abook.sqlite file, also shown as 256 KB. But the old abook.mab file's content does not appear when I restart Thunderbird and look at the address books. No abook.sqlite file was created in my a1b2c3d4.default folder.
The references I've found so far appear to be for Windows installations, so I'm hoping someone will have suggestions more suitable to the Linux environment.
